One of the first significant competitive practice actions on generative AI Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched a survey of five top creators of this technology.
The agency today issued 6(b) orders against Amazon, Microsoft, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet, requiring the companies to provide information about their recent multibillion-dollar investments and partnerships. The study will “scrutinize” these relationships and actions to better understand the FTC’s impact on the competitive landscape.
Companies have 45 days to respond.
Commission is moving quickly after initial agreement caused concern About the Gen AI competition last June.
“History shows that new technologies can create new markets and healthy competition,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan. She said: “As companies race to develop and monetize AI, we must be wary of tactics that take away this opportunity.”
In response to the investigation, Microsoft provided the following comment from Rima Alaily, Corporate VP of Competition and Market Regulation Group.
“The United States has a global AI leadership position because of the collaboration of important U.S. companies. Partnerships between independent companies such as Microsoft and OpenAI, as well as many other is accelerating innovation. We look forward to providing the information the FTC needs to complete its investigation.”
Explore multi-billion dollar investments, intertwined features
Specifically, today’s orders went to those involved in three recent multi-billion dollar investments.
- The expanded partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI was announced on January 23, 2023.
- The strategic partnership between Amazon and Anthropic was announced on September 25, 2023.
- Expanding AI partnership between Google and Anthropic announced on November 8, 2023.
The FTC is seeking information about:
- Investment/partnership agreements and strategic rationale.
- Impact of investments/partnerships – including decisions on new product releases, governance and oversight, and joint meeting agendas.
- Analysis of competitive influences, including market share, competitors, market, sales growth potential, and product or regional market expansion.
- Context regarding competition for AI inputs and resources, including competitive dynamics for products and services important to the AI generation.
- Information about government agencies (including foreign governments) regarding ongoing investigations, requests for information, or other inquiries.
Among many other requirements, technology companies must provide: all documents Relates to the nature and extent of interactions, impact on the company, involvement in decision-making, such as roadmaps, product and service discontinuations, personnel decisions, and all analyzes, reports, studies, and investigations related to transactions.
It should also outline any agreements regarding expectations for inclusivity or privileged access, as well as any limitations or conditions on setting pricing, terms, or granting access.
“Our research will shed light on whether the investments and partnerships pursued by leading companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition,” said Khan.
Microsoft and OpenAI partnership is in “third phase”
Microsoft — just hit hard. Valuation of $3 trillion — has invested about $10 billion in OpenAI, and the two companies are currently in a situation they call “.third stage” Collaboration with.
Notably, Microsoft is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. The tech giant also pledged to increase investment in the development and deployment of dedicated supercomputing systems to “accelerate OpenAI’s groundbreaking independent AI research.”
Microsoft is further rolling out OpenAI’s model across its products and plans to “introduce new categories of digital experiences built on OpenAI’s technology,” including the Azure OpenAI service.
“The next phase of our partnership will enable developers and organizations across industries to access the best AI infrastructure, models, and toolchains using Azure to build and run their applications. ,” Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement about the partnership. .
Amazon’s $4 billion investment and Anthropic’s ‘long-term commitment’
Anthropic has been an AWS customer since its inception. their collaboration It has expanded significantly since then. Notably, Amazon has invested up to $4 billion in Anthropic, making it a minority shareholder in the company.
Additionally, AWS is Anthropic’s primary cloud founder, and the company plans to run the majority of its workloads on AWS. Anthropic uses AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train, and deploy underlying models. The two companies are also collaborating on future Trainium and Inferentia features.
Anthropic has a “long-term commitment” to providing “future generation” foundational models to AWS customers via Amazon Bedrock. With Amazon Bedrock, Amazon developers and engineers can also use and build on his Anthropic models.
“Additionally, Anthropic will provide AWS customers with early access to unique capabilities for model customization and fine-tuning capabilities,” the companies announced.
“By significantly expanding our partnership, we can unlock new possibilities for organizations of all sizes by deploying Anthropic’s secure, cutting-edge AI systems and AWS’ cutting-edge cloud technology.” Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei said in a press statement. Collaboration release.
Google, Anthropic develop “steerable AI”
A new investment in OpenAI rival Anthropic appears to be coming this week, with Google and its owner Alphabet, Inc. worked with startups Since its founding in 2021.
Through our partnership, Anthropic uses Google Cloud security services, including Chronicle Security Operations, Secure Enterprise Browsing, and Security Command Center. The startup also introduced Google’s TPU v5e to Claude Large Language Model (LLM).
Anthropic also leverages Google’s PostgreSQL-compatible database AlloyDB and Google’s BigQuery data warehouse to process transactional data.
“Our long-standing partnership with Google is built on a shared commitment to developing AI responsibly and deploying it in ways that benefit society,” Amodei said in a press release about the expanded relationship. “We look forward to continuing to work together to make steerable, reliable, and interpretable AI systems available to more companies around the world.”
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